Nine-year-old Norah arrives one frigid night at the home of the widowed Margaret Quinn, seemingly to take the place of Margaret's only child, Erica, who ran off years ago to join a Sixties revolutionary group, the Angels of Destruction. Set in a small Pennyslvania town in 1985.

"In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband Theo is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toy shop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter...